10 French Chefs Who Have Changed the Way We Eat

Finalement! It’s Bastille Day—a day to stuff yourself silly with French food, toast with a glass of top-shelf wine (or several!), and celebrate all things French. So there can be no better occasion to let our inner Francophile out as we celebrate 10 current Gallic chefs (shouts to the old masters as well, like Escoffier) who have made the United States a much more delicious place—either through their translatlanctic influence or their game-changing work on these shores.

These are the people who, over the last three decades, have pioneered new ways of cooking, opened foundational restaurants that forever altered the dining landscape, and trained many of the younger cooks who are now taking over the game. From Alain Ducasse to the creator of the Cronut, get to know 10 French chefs who have changed the way we eat.

Finalement! It's Bastille Day—a day to stuff yourself silly with French food, toast with a glass of top-shelf wine (or several!), and celebrate all things French. So there can be no better occasion to let our inner Francophile out as we celebrate 10 current Gallic chefs (shouts to the old masters as well, like Escoffier) who have made the United States a much more delicious place—either through their translatlanctic influence or their game-changing work on these shores.
These are the people who, over the last three decades, have pioneered new ways of cooking, opened foundational restaurants that forever altered the dining landscape, and trained many of the younger cooks who are now taking over the game. From Alain Ducasse to the creator of the Cronut, get to know 10 French chefs who have changed the way we eat.

Dominique Ansel

Restaurants: Dominique Ansel Bakery
Best Known for: Inventing the Cronut (and making countless other next-level pastries).
Even if you've not heard of Dominique Ansel (as if), you've most certainly heard of his doughnut-croissant hybrid, the Cronut—the one that's inspired scalpers, violence, tears, and shameless copycats. But Ansel's about a lot more than just that. After a 12-year stint at Fauchon in Paris and a six-year one as the pastry chef at Daniel, he's a pâtissier on a mission, bringing obscure french delights to American shores and doing crazy things to classic desserts (see his latest creation, frozen s'mores).

Jacques Torres

Restaurants: Jacques Torres Chocolates
Best known for: Being a Willy Wonka-esque chocolate wizard who makes his own chocolate entirely from scratch.
Though he first came to the limelight for constructing whimsical desserts like a miniature chocolate Stove and a chocolate clown at Le Cirque in the '90s, Jacques "Mr. Chocolate" Torres is now focuses solely on chocolatier-ing rather than cooking in restaurant kitchens. His growing cocoa empire of seven stores (including two chocolate factories and an ice cream store) churns out carefully decorated bonbons, glorious truffles, unusual delicacies like chocolate-covered Cheerios, and some of the most delicious hot chocolate we've ever had.

Eric Ripert

Restaurants: Le Bernardin, Westend Bistro, Blue, 10 Arts
Best known for: Being the zen master of Le Bernardin, arguably the most important seafood restaurant in America.
Since 1994, Eric Ripert has been the high priest of one of the country's great temples to seafood, treating fish with a reverence and technique that is unparalleled. No wonder he's the only chef to have won four-stars from the New York Times repeatedly for a period of 15 years. With multiple TV appearances (on Top Chef and his hugely successful PBS series, Avec Eric) and even a YouTube show ("On the Table"), Ripert has changed how Americans prepare and talk about seafood. Plus, we hear he's a Batman fan and he's even cooked for the Dalai Lama, and that makes him indisputably the most zen chef around.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten

Restaurants: Jean Georges, JoJo, Mercer Kitchen, ABC Kitchen, ABC Cocina, and more than 30 others
Best known for: Fusing French cooking with global flavors (particularly Asian) and successfully running one of the largest chef-restaurant empires in the world
In the past two decades, no single chef has had more influence on the way New Yorkers dine and the way chefs cook then Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Part restaurant magnate and part brilliant creative, he's most famous for reinventing haute cuisine by using vegetable juices, infused oils, and Asian ingredients for a lighter, cleaner taste—and then packaging all that genius into a staggeringly vast global empire. Some say he's spread himself too thin, sacrificing quality for quantity, but even today, the prospect of a new eatery in his hands gets the hordes queuing up—just look at the feverish hype over the new ABC Cocina in NYC.

Hubert Keller

Restaurants: Fleur De Lys, Burger Bar, Fleur by Hubert Keller
Best known for: Being one of the first French chefs to raise the humble burger to elevated status.
It's not often you find a French chef who's most popular art is an American burger. But Hubert Keller is anything but typical - Even his highly acclaimed contemporary French cooking is accented with Mediterranean and Brazillian flavors. With his easy-going manner and cheerful demeanor on Top Chef, Top Chef Masters, and his very own Secrets of a Chef series on PBS, Keller embraces the role of Celebrity chef. He's cooked at the White House for Bill Clinton and his family, and ever so often, he trades his apron for a spin table and puts up a mean show at a club. It doesn't get more rockstar than that. In Vegas, he serves the FleurBurger 5000, a $5,000 high-roller burger that involves foie gras, black truffles, and a pairing of Chateau Petrus 1990.

Jacques Pepin

Best known for: Being the granddaddy of French cooking in the U.S.
Jacques Pepin has worn several hats—chef, author, cooking series host, food columnist, instructor, and accomplished artist—in his brilliant culinary career spanning over 50 years. His down-to-earth attitude make it all the more remarkable that he's bantered with Julia Child on TV, served as personal chef to Charles De Gaulle, and turned down an offer to be President John F. Kennedy's personal chef at the White House. Through his cookbooks—including the highly regarded La Technique, still used in classrooms today (and remixed by us)—and his work at the International Culinary center in New York, he continues to shape young chefs and inspire home cooks.

Alain Ducasse

Restaurants: Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, Benoit, Mix, and more than 20 others
Best known for: Pioneering the idea of a global franchise based on haute cuisine
Though most parts of his 24-restaurant strong haute-cuisine empire are outside of the country (only 3 are in the U.S.), it cannot be denied that Alain Ducasse has had a monumental impact on chefs in the country —in the kitchen, with his constant quest for the new and creative, as well as his obsessive attention to details; and also outside, with his success in creating a diversified haute cuisine franchise, one which includes everything from restaurants, inns, cooking, and pastry schools, to a publishing house and even a thriving consulting business.

Alain Passard

Restaurant: L'Arpège
Best known for: Giving a face lift to vegetarian cooking and going farm-to-table long before it became a trend.
In 2001, Alain Passard created a stir (and the beginnings of a movement) by unapologetically removing meat from the menu of L'Arpège, his three-michelin starred Paris restaurant. Instead, he began to focus entirely on bring out the best in vegetables grown in his own organic farms. Today, L'Arpège is widely touted as one of the greatest restaurants in the world, and Passard's philosophy of food and his mastery of growing and cooking vegetables has inspired an entirely new generation of chefs.

Francois Payard

Restaurants: FP Patisserie, Francois Payard Bakery, and Payard in NYC, and several in Japan and Korea
Best known for: Pastry
We have a lot to thank Francois Payard for New York's dessert obsession. As pastry chef at Le Bernardin and Daniel, Francois Payard was one of the first to make New Yorkers sit up and take their desserts seriously, with his flavorful and beautifully plated creations. In 1997 he went solo, opening Payard Pâtissserie & Bistro on the Upper East Side, and New Yorkers have not stopped swooning about his ethereal macarons, chocolate bonbons, and petits gâteaux ever since.

Daniel Boulud

Restaurants: Daniel, db Bistro Moderne, DBGB Kitchen and Bar, Bar Boulud, Café Boulud, Boulud Sud, and Épicerie Boulud in NYC, plus many more internationally
Best known for: Fostering some of the most talented chefs and pastry pros working today, including Francois Payard and Dominique Ansel.
Daniel Boulud, a native of Lyon and a long-time resident of New York, is known for his contemporary French cooking inspired by the seasons. He is a true giant of the culinary scene, and his empire of 13 restaurants spans five countries. His NYC flagship, Daniel, was awarded three Michelin stars in 2010.

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